Another broad problem: the younger the sports fan, the less they enjoy being in an arena where their smartphones can’t get a signal. “People don’t like to be out of touch,” said Doug Perlman, founder and CEO of consulting firm Sports Media Advisors and a Duke graduate. “They want to be sharing the experience with their friends.”
That is from this piece in the WSJ, about declining attendance at ACC basketball games. (H/T Senator and Elkon.) That’s a rather ridiculous reason not to go to a game. But I do generally agree with this statement:
Chris Bevilacqua, the founder of a media-consulting group and architect of the Pac-12’s nearly $3 billion TV-rights deal, pointed to another general culprit: the affordability of clearer, larger televisions. The at-home TV experience, he said, is better than ever.
The sports-at-home experience has gotten better and better while the stadium and arena experience — despite the incredible infusion of taxpayer money — has only improved at the margins, if at all. I can honestly say that I do not enjoy going to a lot of games every year in any sport, including football, and for me there is a high degree of diminishing returns: I make it to a few games a year, but after those few the idea of going to more — and to think of the transportation, parking, weather, etc — gives me a particular kind of nausea.
And what I do enjoy about the games, like the atmosphere and the unique traditions and cultures of various cities and campuses, is not necessarily even connected to the game itself. Most of those elements can be captured equally well by tailgating and even watching a game at a bar or simply with friends. (And many of those atmospheric elements don’t necessarily apply to weekday basketball games, for example.) People go see fewer movies in theater with the rise of DVDs, On Demand, and so on.
Indeed, I had a kinda-sorta opportunity to go to the Super Bowl this year. I like Indianapolis — I have spent a good amount of time there, having spent the majority of my childhood and college years in Kentucky and Indiana — but the idea of going to the world’s largest corporate junket sounded downright masochistic. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s the quality of the technology — who knows. But games have been turned into such events that it’s become almost unduly burdensome in comparison with the rewards to go try to see them. So I support your decision not to go to games. With the size of TV deals being struck, they’ll keep playing them. But if you decide not to go to one, just don’t use the bad service to your smartphone as the excuse.